


Interlude

by Peril_in_Peace



Series: The More Things Change [7]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Because of Pops, But standalone story, Closure, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Honorary series entry, References to major and minor character deaths, Rhodey and Rocket? It kinda works, Rocket-Centric, Sole Survivor, The Box isn't Empty and it's SAD, The Zune, Triggers, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 21:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14577948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peril_in_Peace/pseuds/Peril_in_Peace
Summary: After the Snap, Rocket seeks out the only family he thinks he might have on Earth.An honorary entry into the series, because that's where Pops belongs... but this story stands alone. No prerequisites.**Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War**





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> I thought this would be _maybe_ 1000 words... but Rocket didn't want to let go and this got away from me. There were a few lines that actually took ME by surprise while I was writing them and made me cry. I apologize. 
> 
> Also, I imagine this is happening after [A Lot to Lose](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14502468). So... I guess this is sort of a follow-up.
> 
> Thank you! And I'm sorry.

By the time Nebula showed up, in his ship… in _their ship_ , their home… Rocket just didn’t have anything left.

_"They’re gone, fox.”_

He didn’t have any tears left. No anger. No fear.

For just a second, he’d seen the ship, and thought he still had the smallest capacity for _hope_ left…

But Nebula’d said the words, and Rocket had realized that some part of him had known already. Or maybe that was just an excuse. What he told himself to explain…

Rocket had stayed out there, next to the scattering _nothing_ that had been Groot, until the sun had started to go down and the shade from the trees got longer and colder and there was no hint of that _warm--Nothing should be_ warm _. How could anything be warm anymore?_ \--yellow sun left.

Thor had stayed, for a while. Rocket hadn’t missed the way he’d gently moved his new axe, the one Groot had helped him make… he’d moved it from where it rested against the log onto the ground.

Rocket could have reached for it. Could have touched it and ran the wood between his paws.

But he couldn’t.

He did cry. Thor had rested his hand between his ears, like Drax had years ago.

The first time, Groot had--

And Rocket cried.

So much harder and longer.

He didn’t realize why, until Nebula’d said the words.

* * *

“I’m going to kill Thanos. Are you coming with me?”

It took three days for Nebula to conclude that staying on Earth wasn’t gonna fly.

Rocket stopped what he was doing and hopped down from the high stool Shuri had brought into her lab for him. He caught the glance the princess sent his way, how she tensed up and tried not to interject.

The respect for his space.

“Naw,” he shook his head, looking down at the floor and scratching at the back of his head. “These humies… they ain’t so bad.”

Nebula rolled her eyes, but didn’t seem to put much effort behind it. “You’ve been with Quill too long.”

Rocket swallowed. “Yeah. Prob’ly.” He couldn’t hear anything anymore, from the table he’d been working at with Shuri.

He realized he didn’t care that she was listening.

“You takin’ the _Benatar_?” he asked.

Nebula tilted her head and shrugged.

“It’s the only space-worthy craft _on_ this primitive world.”

Rocket wanted to say no. He wanted to say, _“Wait_ . _Let me get…”_ His brain rattled off a list of all the valuable junk on that tub that had made them all… _them_.

But.

The thought of the empty ship was just too… suffocating.

He patted one of his pockets lightly. All of their music was right there. The Zune that Yondu had given Quill… the little box that held at least one song that was a favorite for each of them…

“Do me a favor first?” Rocket asked. Nebula gave a quick nod.

“Well, two I guess… I was gonna start an upgrade of the pod’s comm system before… all this. Increase the range. Had a buncha parts crated up in the hold. Offload ‘em for me?”

“And?”

“Send a message to the _Quadrant_. See if Kraglin… you know,” he finished softly.

“And if he…” Nebula gave an unusual level of consideration to her next words. Rocket could practically see her brain working. “...Doesn’t answer? How will you get off this planet?”

Rocket shrugged. He saw Shuri turn her head in his periphery, curious to the answer too, apparently.

“Either you live and come pick me up, Thor lets me hitch a ride on his bifrost thing or… I guess I just hang out for a while. Got nothin’ better to do, now.” He paused and took a deep breath. “I’ll uh… be making some shit for blowin’ up titans, if you run out of fire power...”

With that he turned away from her. If Nebula objected to anything, she’d say so.

Two hours later, his short-range comm buzzed. The locator signalled the message originated from just past the orbit of this system’s fourth planet. It simply said, “Kraglin’s alive.”

He wished the good news made him happier. But it was just too little, too late.

* * *

On the fifth day, he walked with Shuri into her lab, only to find Banner already there. He was listening to music through a small speaker, his glasses slipping down his nose as he leaned over an extra table that had been brought in, poring over notes. Looked like math.

It took taking a few steps into the room for the garbled beats and pitches from the speaker to turn into music he could hear.

And when he did, he froze.

_"...Things are gonna get easier. Ooh, child, things’ll get brighter. Ooh, child…”_

He saw Groot. Twigs. Scattered and broken in the crash on Xandar. He squeezed his eyes shut and saw Drax and Quill and Gamora, battered and bloody. Ronan. Purple. And Quill’s _stupid_ \--

Rocket swallowed down the bile before he could puke it up all over the shiny white floor.

“Turn that shit off,” he growled.

Banner turned and looked at him for a moment, blinking impotently. Rocket marched over, grabbing the speaker and hurling it at one of the stone walls. It shattered, the room going peacefully silent as the last pieces clattered down.

“Rocket?” Shuri whispered, tentatively reaching out to touch him, then pulling back when his ear twitched.

“I’m-- I’m sorry--” Banner said. Rocket barely heard him over the blood rushing through his ears.

He shook his head and waved his hand, locking his knees so his legs wouldn’t just give out from under him. “I just… sorry…” Rocket mumbled, and walked back out the door.

He stopped, just a step past Shuri, who hadn’t moved. “Sorry,” he said, softly, looking back and catching her eye. She nodded.

“It’s alright,” she said. “We are all upset.”

He kept walking.

Absently, Rocket turned into one of the main hallways of the palace complex. He reached a hand toward his pocket.

He hadn’t listened to anything on the Zune, yet.

Was that why?

Rocket pulled it from the pocket, where it’d been for days.

A little plastic box full of memories… that could stay in that neat little box, as long as he didn’t turn it on.

Except he was on Earth, now, wasn’t he? Where Quill’s music and weird terran shit and even this little plastic box had _come_ from… That had found them out there and… burrowed into them…

Until he had to grudgingly admit that he… _almost_ liked it here.

Nebula was probably right. Too much time around Quill.

But… Groot would have liked it here.

He remembered hearing Quill tell Groot stories, when he was little, about _playing outside_ , about _blue skies_ and frogs and creeks and a thing called “the woods,” that were noisy with _crickets_ and _birds_ … And how wide-eyed Groot would get.

Rocket always felt like an asshole when Quill’d tell those stories… for keeping Groot cooped up on a ship all the time.

Drax… Drax would have liked the food. He would have loved sparring with some of the strong ones.

Mantis liked just about everything, anyway.

Except probably not right now. Right now… it didn’t take an empath to feel the weight of the grief and regret and all the other bad things pulling down those that were left.

And Gamora... would have liked trying to get _Quill_ to like it.

But he was a stubborn prick who’d managed to avoid this place his whole life, because--

Rocket stopped and sighed; closed his eyes, right there in the middle of the hall. Then he changed direction, and headed for the communication room those Avengers idiots had set up outside the king’s council chamber.

Stark was there. Still limping around a little, and favoring his left side. His eyes wandered over to Pepper, asleep in one of the chairs along the wall… probably more often than he realized himself.

“Hey, Stark,” Rocket said. The humie barely glanced at him, before going back to his work, pushing a data pad-looking thing over to Rhodes.

“What’s up, Ranger Rick?”

Rocket winced. “Don’t,” he snarled.

Stark opened his mouth. Rhodes stopped him with an arm across the chest and a shake of his head.

“What?” Stark amended with a tired sigh. Rocket snorted.

“I need some information,” he said. The humie raised an eyebrow.

* * *

Stark tried. Rocket had to give him credit for trying. But the idea that maybe _Quill_ had someone left on this dumb planet when _he’d_ lost that kid…

Nebula’d told him what happened. How Quill had gone nuts when…

Well. Rocket could have told anybody _that_ would happen. Hell, he’d have paid good money to _see_ it happen.

Stark was smart. And as much as he might try to look it, Rocket knew a fake heartless douche from a _real_ heartless douche, and Rocket got the feeling that every time the guy looked over at Pepper just to make sure she was still there, Stark understood.

But in the end, it was Rhodes. He grabbed one of the laptops and nodded at Rocket, jutting his chin in the direction of the door to one of the side rooms with big windows.

Apparently, it had made the news.

“I think I remember this,” Rhodes said. “I was maybe in… junior high? Kid goes missing, same night his mom dies. Someone saw him run out of the hospital, then poof… vanishes.”

“Wait a sec…” Rocket frowned. “The same night? Like, literally from the hospital?”

Rhodes shrugs. “I mean… yeah. He couldn’t have gotten too far. Looks like his granddad went out looking for him almost right away, but he was gone.”

Rocket sighed and shook his head. “You blue, fucking bastard…” he mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Rocket said. “Just… Quill. He never said it was the same night… right away like that… No wonder he was always so messed up about his mom…” he trailed off and let the silence linger for a minute. His paw ran over his pocket and he thought about that dumb Walkman for the first time in a long time.

“So he got abducted by aliens,” Rhodes sat back with his arms crossed over his chest. “And every kid in America got all that stranger danger shit shoved down our throats extra hard for nothing.”

Rocket shrugged. “Nah… it’s good policy, anyway.”

Rhodes huffed a sort of laugh. “Yeah, I guess.”

Rhodes fiddled with the computer a little more and Rocket looked out the big windows. It surprised him a little… how fast he’d stopped expecting to see space outside.

“Huh.”

“What ‘huh?” Rocket’s eyes narrowed.

“His granddad’s still around. Or… well, he was…” Rhodes said quietly. “He hasn’t checked in at one of the emergency census centers yet… but he _is_ in his eighties. Maybe...” he left it hanging, not sure how to finish.

Rocket glanced at the computer screen. Records. Information. A couple of official looking pictures of a guy in a uniform. An old one, with no color, of the same guy in front of a plane.

There was something about him. Familiar. Maybe the way he stood, hand up on the nose of the fighter. Cocky. A goofy, sloppy grin. Too familiar.

“I wanna go,” Rocket said quietly, his eyes still on the computer.

“Yeah,” said Rhodes. “Okay.”

* * *

They didn’t talk much on the ride, but by the time they touched down in Missouri, the humie was _Rhodey_ and Rocket decided he was okay.

He had decent taste in music, playing songs from a little device not much bigger than the Zune, but with a screen as big as _it_ was, that you touched instead of pressing buttons.

“How many songs you got on that thing?” Rocket had asked.

“Thousands?” Rhodey shrugged. “And I can always stream anything I don’t have…”

“Shit…” Rocket breathed. Quill would have had a heart attack. “Got any Glen Campbell?”

Rhodey shook his head. “Don’t think so… but if the network’s back up around here, I’ll download some when we get there.”

They did so in a field just next to the house. It sat on a pretty big chunk of land, and there wasn’t too much around.

Rhodey powered down the craft and looked at him. “Maybe you should let me go first. Not everybody’s cool with... “ He winced a little and gestured at Rocket.

“Yeah,” Rocket said. He looked down at his lap, turning the Zune over in his paws. He swivelled the chair around as Rhodey lowered the rear ramp, his footsteps changing from stomps on metal to quiet shuffles on grass. He rested the buds in his ears, wedging them between little ridges of cartilage so they wouldn’t fall out despite being far too small. He pressed play.

It was halfway through one of the songs from the first tape. He’d put it on the Zune from a clone backed up on the _Quadrant’s_ drive. It was one of the sad ones. “I’m Not In Love.”

Rocket wondered for a minute… if Quill was interrupted mid-way through it. Or if he'd started listening and just couldn't make it all the way. He wondered how long Gamora had been gone by then. If the worst possibility had even crossed Quill’s dumb, stubborn mind.

Because Quill never listened to this one without a reason.

He turned it off. Somehow it seemed wrong to let the song end.

Rocket looked up to see Rhodey back, his hand gripping one of the trusses just inside the open ramp bay. “Come on,” he said. It was low and a little too quiet.

Rocket followed out onto the grass. The sun was high. It was almost too warm. But a breeze ruffled through his fur. And that wasn’t terrible.

But he caught sight of a light on in the house. In the middle of the day like that… Maybe he was used to being in the dark, and terrans weren’t usually like that. But it seemed weird. Brightness overkill, to have a light on by an open window.

Rhodey led the way up a couple of steps, onto a wooden porch, and through a door he’d already jimmied open.

They entered into a kitchen. On the beat-up, honey colored wood table, was a cup of coffee, the start of a fresh mold colony forming a film over what liquid was left and starting to creep up the sides. A newspaper sat next to it, folded between two narrow tracks of dust.

The rest was on the floor, in the chair… having fallen straight down; no wind inside to carry it away.

Rocket stepped over to the table, clutching the edge in his paw.

“Hey, Pops.”

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Rhodey said, lifting one of the beers to his lips.

Rocket had grabbed a couple bottles from the fridge. He figured the old man wouldn’t mind that they didn’t go to waste.

He glanced at Pops, sitting in one of the wooden chairs beside them, in the cardboard box he’d found in one of the rooms upstairs and dumped a pair of shoes out of.

“Quill… you know… _Pete_ … he turned out okay…” Rocket said, his voice barely above a whisper and a little too wet and gross for comfort. He felt Rhodey look at him. “It was rough for a while. Yondu was a real dick, but… kept him safe for ya. I’m sure you probably don’t think that, but… it’s true.”

Rhodey leaned forward; his head dipping down; elbows on his knees and beer held between his hands.

“And we been watchin’ his back since Yondu left. Well, Gamora, anyway… Me, I figure stupid oughta hurt, right? But… she wouldn’t let anything happen to his dumb butt. So…” Rocket choked a little and swallowed hard. “Well, ‘til now, I guess. Sorry about that.”

He took a swig of the beer and looked at the box, waiting for an answer. But suddenly, it was his own head that was full of noise. He squeezed his eyes shut.  

“Do you even need me to tell you all this?” he finally continued, roughly wiping away at the heavy moisture lining his eyes. “You guys are all probably out there somewhere, laughin’ it up without me. It’d be friggin’ _typical_ , you know?” He was irritated now.

It felt better.  

“Well, I hope it’s a shithole. Whatever _heaven_ is, or whatever you humies think… Quill said he grew up hearin’ all these _stories_ of some white, cloudy ‘spirit in the sky’ shit… And you know what he thinks now?” He glared at the box and hopped off the chair, pointing angrily at it.

“Ain’t no place in the universe this ‘god’ guy could hide some _heaven_ where it ain’t gonna be... _infected_ by the raw stink of everything else! An’ if there ever _was_ a heaven to begin with, it’d be just as crappy as the rest of this shitshow by the time any of _us_ saw it, so we might as well just--”

Rocket sighed and slumped to the wooden deck. “... Just _stay_ ,” he whispered. “Why couldn’t you guys just stay…”

He’d thought he didn’t have any tears left.

* * *

Rocket taped a piece of paper to the top of the box. He wrote “Quill” on it, then left it on the low table in front of the couch.

He walked through the house. It was kind of old, but he figured he didn’t know what “old” and “new” really looked like on this planet… but the smell was old. Lived in and almost-- _almost_ \--something like home.

Rocket turned off the lights. Rhodey said it had barely been sunrise on this side of the Earth when Thanos had arrived… The old man had been drinking his coffee and reading the paper. Starting his day. And finishing it.

He saw pictures sitting on dressers and tables. There was one room with lots of them. A bed with a flowery blanket and lots of pillows and a bunch of pictures on the dresser in front of a big mirror. Of a blonde lady and a little boy.

He took one of them.

“Bye, Pops,” Rocket said. He waved at the box as he passed, then turned back. “I… Quill ain’t… he _wasn’t_ stupid. If you see him, tell him… I only say stuff like that ‘cause…” he stepped back and took a deep breath. “Don’t worry about it. He probably knows. Just… tell him… tell them all, when you see ‘em…”

Rocket sniffled, then smirked.

“Tell ‘em to go fuck themselves for leaving my ass behind,” he grated out, straightening his back and striding to the door.

Rhodey had found some keys somewhere. And when they left, he locked the door and handed them to Rocket.

“You might want to come back,” he said.

Rocket shook his head. He put the keys in his pocket.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feel free to pester me on Tumblr [here](https://perilinpeace.tumblr.com/). :)


End file.
